Thursday, November 24, 2016

When it was
released at the tail end of December, 1959, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner
called director, Joseph L. Mankewicz’s Suddenly,
Last Summer “a malignant masterpiece
– a horror picture for adults”; Variety – the showbiz Bible, adding “by far, the most bizarre motion picture ever
made by a major American company.” Indeed, in years to follow there
have been very few movies of any generation to so completely rattle the brain –
literally and figuratively – in a visual and aural repose of absolute human
terror. It can safely be said Katherine Hepburn’s wealthy benefactress,
Violet Venable, ‘democratically’
descending from ‘on high’ in her
Byzantine-esque elevator, thereafter periodically slipping into lugubrious daydreams
of her son, Sebastian and incestuously referring to themselves as ‘a couple’, is one of the most markedly
evil representations of motherhood in cinema history. Only one other comes
immediately to mind, Angela Lansbury’s supremely wicked Eleanor Iselin from
1962’s The Manchurian Candidate.
Like Eleanor, Violet is ‘devoted’ to her offspring – or rather, his downfall; an
enabler/procurer, feeding into and off of his self-destruction. Violet’s flawed
remembrances of their even more insidiously unsettling and curious trip to the
Galápagos Islands, where she and Sebastian witnessed ‘flesh-devouring’
birds turning over newly hatched baby sea turtles to peck apart their soft
stomachs, creates a riveting impression; also, a bit of foreshadowing, and furthermore still, to Vi’s overbearing
gargoyle of a matriarch; interpretations remade into fact, meant to obscure what actually occurred ‘suddenly’ last summer. But exactly
what did happen? Is the integrity of her dead son, the fantasy of their
‘loving’ relationship, or an even more brutally dishonest secret, worth
destroying two lives? Or can it liberate and restore one life, even as it has
so completely decimated the other?

As a movie,Suddenly, Last Summer should have been
a more intensely shocking experience; what, with Tennessee William’s play, its
acidic subject matter eluding to repressed incestuous frustrations, homoerotic
cannibalism, and, the threat of lobotomizing a frightened young innocent,
merely to silence the nightmarish truth sprung from a seemingly innocuous respite on a beach in
Cabeza de Lobo – the movie version had a lot to feast upon (pun intended, for
those familiar with the outcome). And director, Joseph Mankewicz certainly knew
his way around such stagecraft; his movies, literate, sobering revelations on human foibles. Alas, Mankewicz was hampered in several ways as
to prevent the complete and complex maturation of its subject matter; the
Catholic League of Decency weighing in, and Hollywood, not yet willing to
loosen its yolk on screen censorship. The movie’s biggest asset is undeniably
Katherine Hepburn as the disturbing – and disturbed
– matron of the maison; Violet Venable about as grotesque and devouring as the
Venus flytrap she favors in Sebastian’s primordial paradise; a garden populated
by oversized dense foliage straight out of the Cretaceous period, decorated by
winged skeletal statuary; its’ centerpiece, Sebastian’s shuttered artist’s
atelier.

We never meet
the deviant heir apparent to this decaying labyrinth of artistic decadence; the
man closest to Violet’s heart, if indeed she possesses one – the boy
wonder/poet with a weak heart for whom she selfishly allowed a husband to die
alone at home while they frolicked abroad in Europe; Sebastian (Julián Ugarte),
only briefly glimpsed from behind in a regressed ‘flashback’ recalled by cousin, Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor).
Even so, Sebastian’s presence permeates virtually every frame of our story.
Even the crisp white linen suit, greedily pulled from his closet by Catherine’s
brother, George (Gary Raymond), lingers with Sebastian’s essence, thanks
primarily to Tennessee Williams’ infectious dialogue. Were that Elizabeth Taylor’s
performance (Oscar-nominated, no less) could hold a candle to his prose. While
praised at the time for her acting chops, Taylor really does not dig beyond the
surface of this part; her pantomimed reactions as she observes her cousin being
consumed by the urchins he patronized (and, so it is only hinted within the
context of the film, though openly spelled out in the play, exploited for his
own sexual sadisms) more of a lampoon of fear than a genuine reaction to the
carnage on display.

When it opened
on Broadway, Suddenly, Last Summerwas paired with another one-act play by Tennessee Williams; Something
Unspoken – the two given the overall title, Garden District. On stage, Suddenly,
Last Summeris basically two stark and lyrical monologues, Williams
incorporating tragedies endured in his life, with a minor exaltation of his
idol and muse; the poet, Hart Crane. According a rumor, Suddenly, Last Summeris the manifestation of Williams’ desire to
rid himself of his own homosexuality through artistic expression after
undergoing psychoanalysis. The truth is far more complex; Williams suffering
from lifelong – and occasionally lengthy bouts - of paranoia, depression and
anxiety that caused him to drink to excess. These transparencies between
Williams’ life and the play prove compelling; even the superficial naming of
the compassionate Dr. Cukrowicz (played by Montgomery Clift), an obvious ‘homage’ to Dr. Lawrence Kubie who, in
1957, was renown as a leading authority in American psychiatry, specializing in
a ‘cure’ for homosexuality. There is
little evidence to suggest Williams took Kubie’s advice to heart. Indeed, he
never gave up sex or playwriting; Williams’ sessions with the famed
psychiatrist resulting in one of the most fruitful creative periods of his
career.

Williams’
sister, Rose, a schizophrenic, committed to a state asylum for her sexual
babbling, had suffered the fate proposed for the play’s fictional Catherine
Holly; a lobotomy at the instigation of their domineering mother. The operation
left Rose incapacitated and institutionalized for the rest of her life.
Mercifully, Williams spares his ‘Miss
Catherine’ this surgical emasculation by revealing a truth Violet does not
wish to be exposed; arguably, Williams’ revenge on the parents he never quite
forgave for Rose’s fate. Williams even incorporates an incident from life, in
which Rose accused their father of rape, into the play’s narrative; Catherine
alleging an elderly caretaker has made improper advances while she was
convalescing at a convent; the rumors – unsubstantiated, and never believed by
even Catherine’s mother, Grace (Mercedes McCambridge) – prone to her own
fretting and fuss. There is little doubt the symbols of predation employed
within the play’s narrative – and marginally tweaked (nee, watered down, in the
film) are derived from Williams’ psychoanalytic experiences. Yet, in the intervening decades, Suddenly, Last Summer has been misread
as the weak-kneed pleas of a ‘self-loathing
queer’, despite the fact these heterosexuals who populate this bizarre
pantheon are far more perverted, immoral and monstrous.

In spite of
the revelations we discover about Sebastian Venable – that he ‘used people’ via an intoxicating charm,
as readily meant to consume as to ostracize any individual from his social
clique once he was through with them – the real demigod of this piece is
Sebastian’s mother, Violet; a demonstrative gargoyle, pledging her warped sense
of maternal love to this offspring eager to exploit her beauty and wealth
merely to satisfy his own appetite for desperate young men. Violet knows what
her son is and cannot stand it. Insidiously, however, she is fervently
committed to feeding his predilections without admitting to their existence;
her possessive nature wounded, but unbroken, after Sebastian makes a new
travelling companion of Catherine, who is younger, prettier and therefore, more
likely to draw the right kind of attention Sebastian requires to satisfy his
own homoerotic proclivities. As such, Violet’s doggedness to see Catherine’s
lobotomized is never an act of altruism intended to ease this troubled girl of
her haunted mind. It may not even be about maintaining Sebastian’s secret, best
left buried in the past; but rather, a menacing and malignant retaliation
against Catherine for being the new ‘woman’
in Sebastian’s life.

At its crux, Suddenly, Last Summer was never intended
to be a play about homosexuality, despite its mobile of plot entanglements
dangling loosely about the dead gay man at the center of its story. Tennessee
Williams is far more fascinated with scrutinizing the exploitation of the
natural world; how all living things – in one manner or another – ‘devour’
to survive. Unlike Mankewicz’s movie, the play begins with a tour of
Sebastian’s prehistoric garden; Violet Venable, the docent of this somewhat
clinical back story, indulging Sebastian’s Venus Fly Trap with live insects and
thus, establishing Williams’ central theme. Mankewicz retains this vignette for
the movie, but only after a fairly lengthy prologue involving Dr. Cukrowicz, a
brilliant Chicago neurosurgeon, coaxed to practice medicine and perform his
experimental surgeries at New Orlean’s Lion’s View state asylum. Cukrowicz is
somewhat confrontational towards the asylum’s chief of staff, Dr. Lawrence J.
Hockstader (Albert Dekker), especially over the deplorable lack of funding and
less than acceptable working conditions. It seems Hockstader has promised
Cukrowicz the world, without actually being able to deliver; an oversight to be
corrected, should Cukrowicz comply with Violet’s request to perform a lobotomy
on her niece, in order to ‘relieve’ her of these frightening sexual rants.

At
Hockstader’s insistence, Cukrowicz agrees to interview both Violet and
Catherine regarding the particulars of the case. What he quickly realizes is
this grand dame of New Orleans society has some rather deviant quirks of her
own; an almost lionizing passion for her late son, disturbingly isolationist
carnal attraction. Violet considers their mother/son relationship from the
stance of the ‘perfect couple’ and center of attention; the outside world
melting away whenever they entered any room together. Whether intentionally realized or not,
Violet’s insistence Sebastian was ‘chaste’ – an artist, who, having seen the ‘face of God’ on the Galapagos Islands,
considers people only as they might satisfy his craft as a poet – paints a
rather psychopathic account of her son, dismissive of all human foibles; a
prig, perhaps – though not a wanton – whose purity is beyond reproach, but
maybe masking a deeper ‘imperfection’
he could not have suppressed for much longer. Sebastian’s death has therefore
spared him his reputation – at least, insofar as Violet is concerned. Alas, the
fly in this ointment is Catherine: present at the time of Sebastian’s demise,
and the one person who can dispel Violet’s claim he died of a heart attack brought
on by the intense heat. Interestingly, Williams has given the dead Venable heir
the name of a famous martyred saint; Sebastian’s impression completed by
Catherine’s monologue, fleshing out the image of a doomed martyr – impossibly
shy and fairly neurotic – using Violet as ‘bait’ to procure young men for his
leisure.

In the play,
Violet has suffered a mild stroke; the facial tick left behind forcing
Sebastian to forsake his mother’s companionship for a new beauty capable of
luring prospective contacts into his den of iniquity. To satisfy the
conventions of a major motion picture, and one heavily censured by Hollywood’s
self-governing body no less; but also, to flesh out what is essentially a forty
minute oration into a two hour movie with character development, director
Mankewicz turned to openly gay writer, Gore Vidal for inspiration. Vidal’s
contributions are seamless and greatly expand upon the character of Dr.
Cukrowicz, only of marginal importance in the play. The movie opens far away
from the terrifying glamor of Sebastian’s garden; inside a makeshift operating
theater at the state asylum where Cukrowicz is performing a lobotomy on a
nondescript patient under the most primitive working conditions. A balcony
railing breaks loose and a failing generator causes the overhead lights to
momentarily fail. Cukrowicz is disgusted by these surroundings, informing
Hockstader he is ‘not a witch doctor’.
Hockstader is sympathetic, but presses Cukrowicz to perform the lobotomy
on Catherine Holly, primarily because it will secure a badly needed grant of a
million dollars; in 1937 (the period, in which the play is set), enough to
build Cukrowicz his state-of-the-art facility where he can carry on with his
work.

Unlike the
play, basically taking place in Sebastian’s garden and an adjacent verandah,
the film version of Suddenly, Last
Summer takes us inside the Venable estate; a sprawling complex with
adjacent buildings framed by the garden, and later – in flashback, with an
overlapping dissolve into montage, to Cabeza de Lobo, where we witness
(partially) Sebastian being torn apart and eaten by his avenging boy toys. Undeniably, Vidal’s greatest ‘contribution’
to the picture is confirmed in this altered finale; Catherine’s regression
under the influence of truth serum, revealing the particulars of what happened
‘suddenly, last summer’; cross-cutting between the present and the past;
photographed in overlapping images of Sebastian, fleeing the urchins in his
immaculate white linen suit; driven through the cobblestone streets to an
isolated hilltop where he is sacrificed by the ‘gobbling’ hoards; Vidal, quite unable to resist adding sympathy and
restraint to the end of the picture. In the play, Violet storms out of the
garden after ordering Cukrowicz to tear out this salacious memory from her
niece’s mind; an indomitably determined and rather demonic presence to the very
end. The movie provides us with a more avenging finale that nevertheless, and
rather strangely, allows Hepburn’s venomous mother her moment of redemption;
Catherine’s exposure of what really happened at Cabeza de Lobo liberates her
mind from its repressed quicksand of madness. Alas, it also sends Violet into a
tailspin and a retreat into the imagined ‘perfect’
past – or rather, her impressions of Sebastian before last summer; a purgatory
from which she will likely never emerge. To this penultimate conclusion, Vidal
rather clumsily concocts a ‘romance’ of sorts between the antiseptic Cukrowicz
and Catherine; periodically fleshed out within the story by Cukrowicz ability
to show Catherine unaffected kindness – the only character to do so. She
repeatedly throws herself at his head; passionately kissing him twice, to which
he playfully suggests “it was a friendly
kiss”.

In life,
Montgomery Clift, whose earnestly expressive fine-boned features, for a brief
wrinkle in time, branded him the ‘hot’
young stud in Hollywood’s famed stables of masculine stars; posthumous
rewritten as a gay icon, and, Elizabeth Taylor, the screen’s sultry and
violet-eyed vixen, were life-long friends; she, knowing early on he was gay but
keeping it a secret; the two romantically paired in George Stevens’
magnificent, A Place in the Sun
(1951), and later, the ill-fated (and costly epic) misfire, Raintree County (1957); Taylor utterly
devoted to Clift after his good looks were irrevocably destroyed by a
near-fatal car wreck while leaving her home in 1956. It remains fascinating to
watch their loosely quixotic byplay in Suddenly,
Last Summer, void of the more obvious overtures played out in either of the
aforementioned movies; Taylor mashing her glossy lips against Clift’s rather
brittle and stiff doctor – the moment unrequited (one could infer, out of
Cukrowicz’s respect for doctor/patient privilege), except the undercurrent of
these stars’ enduring friendship remain plainly on display during such
exchanges; Clift, grateful and humbled by Taylor’s backstage devoutness to him
(indeed, he was no longer being considered for leading parts, the effect the
accident had on his ego and social life even more devastating and, arguably,
escalating his sad death at the age of 45).

By the time Suddenly, Last Summer went before the
cameras, Montgomery Clift was already a shell of his former self; tortured by
the frustratingly mad downward spiral of his real life. Arguably, this had
begun long before the wreck; Clift, embracing Hollywood’s hedonism with a
chronic addiction to booze and late nights carousing with hustlers. Yet, there
is little to deny the accident as the seminal moment to speed up Clift’s folly,
putting an eventual period to his life; the hellacious dismemberment of Clift’s
car, discovered along a lonely road by actor, Kevin McCarthy, with Clift lying
on its front seat, semi-conscious, half his head missing and two teeth lodged
down his throat; Taylor rushing to the scene to wield absolute power over the
tabloid press who had already gathered, declaring that if any photos were taken
of Clift she would make it her singular mission in life to see none of these men
ever worked in Hollywood again. Whatever the truth to these stories, not a
single image of Clift’s perilous injuries has ever surfaced. Multiple surgeries
and physical therapy rebuilt only a fraction and reasonable facsimile of
Clift’s former self. But the reconstruction, coupled by Clift’s abuse of heavy
painkillers and alcohol did much to age him well beyond his years; Clift’s
death in 1966, later described as “the
longest suicide in Hollywood history.”

It was Taylor
who had championed Clift for the part of Dr. Cukrowicz in Suddenly, Last Summer, producer, Sam Spiegel willing to weather the
risk to keep his star satisfied. Alas, the results were trying at best;
Mankewicz repeatedly grown perturbed with Clift, who could not remember his
lines or get through any of the major scenes without periodically losing his
train of thought; forcing Mankewicz (who preferred long takes) to split up the
action and then cobble together a performance from the various pieces in the
editing room. At one point, Mankewicz went to Spiegel; then, over Spiegel’s
head, to implore cooler heads remove Clift from the film. But Taylor’s clout
proved Teflon-coated. With backing from Katherine Hepburn, Clift remained in
the picture – barely – Hepburn taking her outrage one step further; rumored to
have spat on Mankewicz at the end of the shoot; a summation of her disgust for
the way Clift had been shabbily treated on the set. In reviewing Suddenly, Last Summer again, there is
an intangible fragility and poignancy to the Taylor/Clift relationship as it
translates into their respective on-screen characters; something about the body
language; Catherine’s repeated need to cling to Cukrowicz for support,
heartened by Taylor’s need to console, coddle and look out for Clift’s fragile
and steadily declining sense of self-worth. She does none of this out of pity,
but respect and love for the man she calls her friend; Clift’s tired, careworn
and occasionally glazed over look of affection emanating volumes of sad-eyed
gladness; a heartrending and ruined thing to behold. That Clift could look to
the fictional Sebastian Venable as his counterpoint of sorts, having fallen
from grace as the imminent hot shot about whom much had been written, now to a
point of pretentious folly, still immaculately attired, but physically waning
and emotionally frail, perhaps helped to augment his steady decline. Without
question, it makes for an interesting comparative analysis of the film
today.

It must be
said screenwriter, Gore Vidal’s artistic license has, for the most part,
improved upon the play; shifting Tennessee Williams’ dialogue to different
scenes to invigorate its dramatic flow and, when necessary, even ostentatiously
accepting the challenge to write in Williams’ tone to embellish a scene. As example, the moment where Violet descends
from her elevator, uttering the playfully delicious lines, “Sebastian always said, 'Mother when you descend it's like the
Goddess from the Machine'... it seems that the Emperor of Byzantium - when he
received people in audience - had a throne which, during the conversation,
would rise mysteriously into the air to the consternation of his visitors. But
as we are living in a democracy, I reverse the procedure. I don't rise, I come
down” are purely Vidal’s invention; the elevator, while referenced in the
play, never actually seen. Vidal also punches up the finale by allowing for the
transference of guilt from Catherine to Violet; the former, liberated after
expressing these suppressed memories, the latter, unable to challenge the truth,
retreating into a fantasy alternative for it – because of it – becoming lost,
trapped and destined to remain perversely fantasizing about the fiction that
has consumed her life. And Hepburn plays this penultimate surrender for all its
worth – subtly – Violet’s hands caressing the empty pages of Sebastian’s
notebook; a look of peaceful surrender writ large across her face; mistaking
Cukrowicz for her dead son as she gingerly touches his gentle hands.

Was Vidal
compelled to alter the ending of the play to satisfy the Hays Code, Breen
Office and Catholic League of Decency? Hmmm. Convention of the day promised no
bad deeds go unpunished. Sebastian’s comeuppance fits his crime; to be
dismembered by the boys whose innocence he has stolen. Violet’s punishment is
no less murderously devised; for she surrenders sanity for the sake of a dream
best remembered before all these nightmares of the present have set in. That Suddenly, Last Summer was made at all
is, frankly, a miracle; Mankewicz ambitiously pursuing one of the most
controversial properties in, then, recent times to create a riveting – if marginally
convoluted – artwork underscored by Tennessee Williams’ own spark of Southern
Gothic brilliance. And Production Designer, Oliver Messel and Art Director,
William Kellner have outdone themselves on crafting Sebastian’s garden
landscape; moodily lit and photographed in stark B&W by cinematographer,
Jack Hildyard. The results are a tad melodramatic, and, as previously
discussed, slightly blemished, though nevertheless vividly realized. Thus, and,
in the end, Suddenly, Last Summer
remains a unique work of cinema art; the visual manifestation of some very
impure thoughts.

Your old Columbia Classics DVD is officially a coaster for your drink. For here is
another beautifully rendered ‘region free’
Blu-ray from Viavision and MadMan Entertainment; a disc erroneously advertised
as ‘region B locked’ on various
websites when, in actuality it will play on any
Blu-ray device anywhere in the world.
I sincerely wish Viavision would get its own advertising right. Their
previously reviewed Lost Horizon
(1937) Blu-ray suggested ‘region 4’ encoding. Suddenly Last Summer’s back jack blatantly advertises this disc as ‘region B’ locked. Lies – all lies. But
I digress. Once you have seen the near pristine quality of this 1080p transfer,
the old Columbia DVD is obsolete. The B&W image herein is stunning;
exporting superb shadow delineation, exquisite textures, superb amounts of fine
detail and some gorgeous grain. There are a handful of scenes that can appear
marginally softer by direct comparison; possible the result of dupe inserts.
But even these momentary lapses are not so far gone as to distract. Better
still, there are no age-related artifacts to intrude. The DTS 2.0 mono audio sounds quite unexpectedly powerful. Suddenly Last Summer is a primarily
dialogue-driven movie, so stereo really is not necessary. One thorough regret –
NO extras – not even a trailer. Bottom line: this one is a keeper. Like many
classic movie fans living in North America, I have grown sincerely tired of
waiting for the major studios to get their act together and release more of their back catalog on this side of the pond. As Viavision/Madman have proven they
possess the rights to legitimately authored impeccable masters from the
Sony classic library, rest assured what you are buying from them is
quality of the highest order. So buy today and treasure forever.

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca